I only have a short post tonight since I’ve already posted about snorkeling and dolphin watching. I did a second day of that this morning, and it was awesome again. I got some great dolphin video. It was a beautiful day. The water was deep blue and clear so the dolphins were easy to see even under the water. I could go dolphin watching a lot and not get tired of it. I was on a boat with a slide again, so after I finished snorkeling, I did some sliding off the boat into the water.

I met some really interesting people on the tour today. I sat beside a family from France with a teenage daughter. They are on a 6 month backpack tour of the world. They started in Asia a few months ago, then went to Southern Europe and are now making their way through Latin America. They are visiting any country they can get into, and they seem to be having a wonderful time. They said schools in France are mostly online and the environment with masks is not good so they took their daughter out and her education is mostly a world tour, which will be amazing for her. They are probably doing some home schooling too. They were super nice and interesting. There was also a German family with a 3 year old little boy. They are spending 5 weeks in Costa Rica, and they seem to travel quite a bit too. It was interesting to watch them with their little boy. He was part of the family rather than the center of the universe. He was exceptionally well behaved. They put a life jacket on him and took him up to the front of the boat so he could watch dolphins. When we snorkeled, they dropped him in the water to swim with his dad. At one point, his mom wanted to go take pictures while his dad tried out the slide so she told him to sit by himself in the boat until she got back. Our tour guide offered to sit with him, but he would have been on his own otherwise. The kids in both the French and German families will probably grow up to be reasonable people, adventurous, independent people with amazing experiences. This little boy did whatever his mom and dad were doing.

One of my favorite parts of the tours I’ve done is meeting new people and interacting with them normally. We wear masks in the tour van, but once we’re on the boat, no one wears masks. We all know that there’s some risk with Covid, but everyone has decided to live as best they can despite Covid. I’m going to miss that when I come back home. It’s been awesome to be with really interesting, adventurous people who I can talk to normally and don’t have to stay away from. The French family said that Covid had made France a depressing, stressful place so they just decided to leave on a world tour. That’s the kind of person I want to be! I should have asked them what kind of jobs they have that allow them to do a 6 month world tour!

I spent the rest of the day on the beach enjoying the sunshine and swimming. The waves were high today so there were several surfers out. This is a good place to learn to surf. I had overpriced Italian food from the restaurant across the street for dinner. Overall, it was a fun day. Tomorrow is my last day here. I don’t have anything planned. I’ll get some good food and enjoy my last day on the beach.

I didn’t get any really good pictures today, but I’ll post the picture of the board I was on with the slide.

This morning, I left my apartment in the dark at 5am to go on a day trip to Rio Celeste. I had a guide named Michael who picked me up and took me on the 2.5 hour road trip. He was young, but super nice and did a really good job with the trip. He asked me if I wanted to speak in Spanish or English. I chose Spanish, so I essentially got free Spanish lessons all day. It was really good practice.

Rio Celeste is a famous national park in Costa Rica because the water is a beautiful turquoise blue color. There is aluminum in the water that reflects the sun and gives the water color. It was cloudy today, so the water wasn’t as bright as it is in sunny weather, but the river and waterfall are in a cloud forest so sunshine is hit and miss. There is a lovely trail going to the waterfall, then more trails that take you through the forest. It was a pretty good hike. There is a long staircase going down to the waterfall. Once you’ve taken pictures, you have to go back up. There were stairs in other places too.

Rio Celeste is in Tenorio Volcano National Part. The waterfall is on the volcano and there are three volcanos in the area. There is another river that runs into Rio Celeste, and it bubbles in places with heat and sulfuric gas that come out of the ground. It’s a beautiful area, but it smells pretty strongly in places like rotten eggs because of the sulfur. The picture below shows the point where the two rivers converge. You can see the color change between the clear, sulfuric water and the aluminum water.

There were quite a few people out hiking the trails today. A lot of people from San Jose, the capital, bring their families. It’s an inexpensive way to visit a natural area. I also met a French guy who took a picture of me with my guide, so I got to practice a bit of French. The only draw back to this area is the bugs. There is a variety of insect that my guide called chiggers. They aren’t like chiggers in the US. They are more like large gnats. When they bite, they take a chunk out of your skin and leave you bleeding. Fortunately, my guide had some bug spray that worked really well, but I was bleeding in several places before I got it sprayed on.

After we left the park, we drove around the area looking for animals. There’s a lot of wildlife diversity in the area. We didn’t see any animals, but it’s a beautiful area with striking geography. You are surrounded by three huge volcanos covered in vegetation. Along the way, we came across a Rainbow Eucalyptus tree. I had seen pictures of these, but I had never seen an actual tree and I didn’t know they grew in Costa Rica. They are amazing! They hardly look real! I couldn’t get a good picture of the one I saw, but I’m posting an internet picture below.

For lunch, my guide took me to a fantastic, family-owned restaurant. It was an open air restaurant in a forested area and there was a small trail behind the restaurant. I had a traditional Costa Rican dish called a Casado. I ordered mine with fish but you can get other meat, usually chicken. It’s beans, rice, meat, salad, fried plantains and Costa Rican cheese. It was delicious! I don’t usually like fried plantains, but even these were good. The region we were in specializes in raising tilapia and dairy cows. So the fish was fresh and the cheese was made in the region with milk from local cows. I don’t know how to explain Costa Rican cheese. It’s good, has a mild flavor, but is a little rubbery. Picture is below.

My guide had been looking for sloths during our drive. This region of Costa Rica has a lot of sloths but they are hard to see. They are basically little gray fur balls that curl around gray trees. On the way home, on the side of a busy road, my guide spotted one. I have no idea how he saw it high up in a tree while driving the car. It was impressive. We pulled off the road in front of a run down house with a sort of run down looking guy with no shirt on out front. He started waiving at us, and we weren’t initially sure whether he was friendly or not. He ran into get a really dirty shirt, while I took the binoculars to look at the three toed sloth. When he came back out, he invited us into the yard because there was another sloth lower in a tree with a baby. She was all curled around the baby, so I couldn’t see the baby or get a good picture but it was cute. The owner of the junk-filled yard then offered to give us a tour of his property because sometimes there are toucans in the area. He had a small dirt path behind the house that ran beside a river. We carefully avoided the cow maneur, climbed under a barbed wire fence and entered a small wooded area. I didn’t understand most of this guys Spanish. I’m pretty sure he wasn’t speaking well-educated Spanish that you learn in school, but he was really proud of his trail by the river and his small wooded spot. He likes to fish in the river in the evening. He seemed mostly lonely and was happy to have people to talk to and appreciate a place he loves. It was nice of him to invite us and I appreciated the tour. I also love sloths!

I made it back to my apartment around 4pm. I was messy, covered in bug spray and bug bites, so I decided to go swim for a little while. I think the salt water helps with bug bites. The ocean was really choppy today with sizable waves. It’s fun to be in the water with waves rolling in, but it makes for rough swimming. You have to decide quickly whether to jump above the wave or dive under. Otherwise, you get water up your nose. When I got back, my landlady brought me a box of strawberries grown by someone she knows. That will be part of my breakfast.

Tomorrow is the last activity I have planned. I’m going dolphin watching and snorkeling again. Hopefully the water will be calm enough for snorkeling. I’m posting pictures below. There are several, so I’m going to try doing a slideshow this time.

I had so much fun snorkeling and dolphin watching yesterday that I decided to go back to the tour shop today to set up some additional tours for the rest of the week. I had planned to do horseback riding, a nighttime turtle watching trip and another snorkel trip. When I got there, I noticed that this tour shop also does day trips to some other parts of Costa Rica, and they look amazing. I talked to the tour guy and he recommended that I do an overnight trip to a national part at Rincon then spent the following day at the Arenal Volcano. I told him I wanted to think about it, but I went ahead and booked horseback riding for this afternoon. I spent all day trying to decide what to do about the overnight trip. It’s very reasonably priced, I would have a private guide, and overall, it seemed like a good deal. But, it’s also a lot of time driving to various locations. It would be about 5 hours each day in a car. So, I’ve decided to do a single day trip. I’ve never been to Rincon so I’m going to go there, see the waterfall and do some hiking but still be back at my apartment by supper. I think that will be fun and less exhausting than the two day trip.

I went horseback riding at 3:30pm. I probably should have asked how long the horseback riding trip was, but it was already 3:30 so I thought it couldn’t be that long. As it turned out, it was three hours of the slowest riding I’ve ever done. My horse was big and beautiful. His name was Canelo (Cinnamon), but he was in no hurry to get anywhere. I spoke to him in three different languages and none of them had any effect. He also preferred to walk in the weeds as opposed to the road, which meant he kept running me into trees. At one point, my guide yelled “watch out, that one has thorns,” and sure enough, it was a beautiful, flowering plant with some pretty solid spikes on the stems. I had to do some sophisticated acrobatics to avoid being skewered. It also rained on us for a significant part of the trip. It started raining fairly soon after we left. My guide was an elderly guy missing some teeth, he seemed unbothered by the rain, and assumed that I wouldn’t be bothered either. He noted that it was raining and we kept on going into the forest. I don’t actually mind the rain and it made things cooler so I was okay with that. After three hours, when it started raining again, I was feeling less okay about it. I went for a run this morning, then did weights, then did three hours of riding. I think every part of my body will hurt tomorrow. It hurt to sit down in my chair for supper tonight and I doubt that situation will improve by tomorrow.

Even though the horse riding trip was too long, we went on some beautiful trails that I didn’t know existed here. If you know where to look, you can find some really amazing trails, but you need to live here to know where they are. My guide took me up on some huge bluffs overlooking the ocean. It was foggy and raining and beautiful. At one spot, you look down and there’s a huge section of volcanic rock that looks like it just flowed into the ocean. The water around it is clear and blue. My guide said it was a good place for fishing. He likes to fish. We also briefly visited a turtle hatchery. Unfortunately, they didn’t have any baby turtles but it was neat to see the effort to increase turtle populations here. My guide didn’t speak English, so I got some good Spanish practice. He seemed to know everyone we met along the way. He grew up here, so he probably does know everyone.

I’m completely exhausted again tonight, but overall it was a good day and tomorrow I’ll go set up my trip to Rincon. I’m hoping to go there on Wednesday. I’m posting a few pictures below. I had already been rained on by the time these were taken.

When I got up this morning, I had no plans and I wasn’t sure that I’d have anything to post tonight. I had one picture of an iguana on my animal cam, which was not interesting at all. The raccoons didn’t even come back last night! Since I haven’t gotten any good pictures, I decided to try exploring the woods behind my apartment. I found some plastic chairs in the yard, I tossed one of them over the concrete wall behind the apartment and climbed over. The woods looked pretty thick, but once I got in, I found some trails and clear spots. By accident, I came across a trail that someone has cleared relatively recently to get big equipment into the woods. I think the property is for sale and it looks like someone is planning to build something. It’s fantastic for me because there is this really nice trail that goes up to the top of a hill with a beautiful view of the ocean. From there, I was able to climb some other hills and do a bit of exploring. I’m not sure whether the area is currently being cleared or had been cleared in the past and is just starting to grow back. It’s a really neat way to get safely into the woods, as long as I don’t get caught by whoever owns it. I set my animal cam up back there and I’m hoping to get some better pictures. There were animal tracks in the mud. I also want to explore the trails early one morning. I’m more likely to see animals then. I saw some howler monkeys this afternoon but they were high up in trees above town. I’ll have a better chance of seeing them in the woods in the morning.

I was a sweaty mess after my hike this afternoon, so I spent most of the rest of the afternoon at the beach. It was a perfect day to be in the water. The water was warm, relatively clear and the waves weren’t too rough. I’m hoping the salt water will minimize the mosquito bites I got while hiking. I probably need to get some bug spray.

Tonight for supper, I decided to go to a restaurant that I like right on the beach. It serves typical Costa Rican food. I really wanted some fish and this restaurant has good fish. It’s an outdoor restaurant so you get to eat outside and watch the sun go down over the ocean. It was lovely and my fish was delicious! I also had lemonade with mint. Overall, it turned out to be an interesting day. I’m posting a few pictures of my hiking trail and my dinner. I took the daytime ocean pictures from the top of the hill I climbed, but it’s hard to tell how high up I am. In one of the pictures, you can see an island in the distance. I’m pretty sure that’s where I’m going snorkeling tomorrow.

There’s a baby gecko running around on the wall of my apartment beside my bed. I hope it eats ants. I’ve been thinking that I should capture one and let it go in the kitchen, so I’m excited that one has moved in on its own. Maybe it will invite some friends.

I accidentally ordered vegan ice cream today. I’ve really been wanting some ice cream, so after lunch, I found a little shop that said “homemade ice cream.” I didn’t notice until after I ordered that it also said “vegan.” I’m not sure what’s in vegan ice cream. It wasn’t bad. It had a good chocolate flavor, but it didn’t melt. It was cold and mostly had a texture like regular ice cream, but it was scorching hot today and my ice cream didn’t melt. It had a very thick, silky texture, so it must be made with some sort of plant-based oil. I need to look it up. I’m not sure how I feel about it, but it is convenient that it doesn’t melt here.

I checked my animal cam this morning. The little agouti was back but I mostly had pictures of raccoons. The raccoons here are exactly the same as raccoons in the United States, so the pictures were pretty boring. The squirrels are at least uniquely colored, but not so with the raccoons. I’ll post a picture below so you can all verify that the raccoons are exactly the same.

I signed up for a snorkeling trip today. I’ll get to do that on Sunday, so that should be fun. There’s an island close by that’s supposed to have good snorkeling. The trip will be dolphin/turtle watching and snorkeling. I’m looking forward to it, although last time I tried to do a boat trip here, everyone in the boat, including me, got seasick. I think I have some Dramamine that I may take ahead of time and I’m hoping it will be a better boat or calmer water. The water around the island is supposed to have a good variety of fish, octopus, rays and other animals so I’m looking forward to going.

I got up at 6:30 am to go check my animal cam, get breakfast from the bakery and lift weights before class. I’m not usually a morning person, so I’m completely wiped out tonight.

So I had a series of small mishaps today. Nothing serious, just some minor annoyances. It poured here last night. Apparently there is a leak in my roof because I woke up at some point with water dripping on me. The leak must not be really serious because it didn’t last long, but it kept me up for a while. I need to tell my landlady so she can get it fixed before the rainy season. I went for a run this morning and the humidity must have been 95%. It was like breathing through water! I still had a good run, but I was drenched by the time I got back.

Yesterday, I bought some bread and delicious raspberry/pomegranate jelly. It’s a unique combination that goes well together. I had some for dessert last night and more for breakfast this morning. After breakfast, I left the bread on the kitchen cabinet. It was in a wrapper so I assumed that would be okay. When I got back from Spanish class, it was covered with millions of ants. The ants are terrible here. You can’t leave food out at all! And they bite! They are tiny, but for their size, they have quite a bite. So, tomorrow I have to go get more bread and keep it in the refrigerator.

I checked my animal cam this morning. I had a few pictures, but they aren’t really clear ones. I think it’s an agouti. An agouti is a small rodent that eats fruit. The picture is below. The rain probably kept other animals away and my cat food was soaked this morning. I put out some watermelon and more cat food this afternoon, but it looks like it’s going to rain again tonight, so I may not have much luck. It’s the dry season, so it’s unusual to have rain like this.

I spent some time at the beach and had Spanish class, but it was a slow day otherwise. I’m getting ready to eat supper and have some chocolate and tea. Hope everything is going well for you all!