Costa Rica; A Wildlife Expedition!

Hola readers of the Sanchez travels! We are currently nearing the end of our wildlife adventure in Costa Rica so apologies for the tardiness of the blog post! Some of our locations have been pretty remote so access to the Internet was not readily available. As with our China postings, please check back to see photos and recap of our experience.

Today is Tuesday, July 17th at 5:25 pm CR time. We are in Tortuguero, Costa Rica. We arrived in CR on Thursday, July 12. We left San Antonio on a 3:45 pm flight and many thanks to our friend Ellen with American Airlines for the surprise seat upgrade; we owe you dinner! We changed planes in Dallas and flew nonstop from Dallas to San Jose, CR. Our guide, Luis Diego; he goes simply by Diego met us at the airport and our driver Alex took us to our first destination; the hotel San Gildar in San Jose. We checked in that evening for just a quick overnight. We go back to SJ on Thursday from Tortuguero and spend another evening there before our return flight home. We awoke the next morning to have breakfast al fresco. Our travel companions are Steve and and his wife Johni. Steve is with the San Antonio Zoo. Remaining travel companions are Mary with the Denver Zoo and Kim and her husband Dolphie and two sons; Mike & Cameron as well as Bill, an uncle to Kim. Kim is with Adventure Seekers; the hosting agency for our trip.

After breakfast we boarded our travel van and left SJ to the Volcan Paos or Paos Volcano National Park. Diego has been a travel guide for 16 years and has been the most spectacular and knowledgeable guide we have ever had! He pointed out flowers and animals and stopped along our routes for us to photograph nature and the landscape. Along the road to the park we viewed the coffee fields and sugar cane and fern fields. The scenery was spectacular. After the park we stopped on the road for lunch. We had a long drive that afternoon as our next stop was in Monte Verde. The next day we went on a high altitude rain forest hike. After the hike we toured the hummingbird gardens and bird watched. We saw all forms of flora and fauna and walked over canopy suspension bridges. We spent two nights in Monte Verde at the Fonda Vela hotel.

More adventure in store for us the next day! We went to Selvatura. At Salvatura our main activity was the zip line. The zip line took us through and above the cloud forest. It was amazing. There were 15 stops in all. For those of you not familiar with a zip line here is a description. It is a suspended cable that goes downhill from tower to tower. You are connected to the zip line with a harness and a wheel that is attached to the line. Basically it is a gravity powered ride from 300 to 1,000 feet long depending on the tower locations. You wear a helmet and leather gloves as your one hand is your breaking mechanism. It is very breath taking!

The next day we left Monte Verde for Arenal. We had to drive a lengthy stretch and then cross a lake by boat to get to our destination. We spent the day at the Arenal volcano; an active one. It was rumbling and spewing rock and the sound was like aircraft traveling overhead.

After spending the day in Arenal we traveled to Serapiqui. There we stayed two nights at the Selva Verde Lodge. Wow! What a difference from the last two accommodations. We felt as if we were in summer camp as the rooms were very basic with beds and showers but no clocks or TVs. We toured the Tirimbina Rain forest Center; a national wildlife refuge. More flora and fauna with several suspension bridges thrown in! The next day we white water rafted on a level III river; the Sarapiqui which means holy water. None of us were thrown overboard but we got soaked to the skin and enjoyed every minute of it.

This morning we got on the road to Tortuguero; home of the green sea turtle. We had to drive through banana plantations to get to our boat then proceeded to come by boat an hour and 15 minutes. Tortuguero is on the Caribbean side of CR and you can hear the ocean from our room. Diego has forbidden us to swim in the ocean as it is much too treacherous. The beach is a black sand beach. We are currently in the season of nesting for the turtles so tomorrow night we should be able to see them lay their eggs. After 6 pm it is forbidden to go on the beach as the turtles are under protection.

On Thursday we leave for San Jose and spend our last night back at our first hotel the San Gildar. It will be much appreciated as this hotel we are in currently; the Mowamba Lodge is definitely the most rustic of all the lodges we have stayed. No clocks, no TVs, no phone; NO air conditioning.

We fly back to San Antonio on Friday morning so we are looking forward to coming home and sleeping in our own beds. I plan to update the blog following the trip detailing our last few nights and uploading photos of our adventures.

As always; thanks for reading.
Hasta luego!

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