Mets Day 257 - Costa Rica Days 1-4 w/pix

Christmas in Costa Rica

I'm sitting on a balcony overlooking the thermally-heated pool at Tabacon Resort near La Fortuna.  The whole family -- Jennifer, the 4 kids, and the son-in-law -- flew in on Saturday Dec. 22 (TACA via El Salvador). The flights were uneventful; it's been a while since I've been on a plane where the passengers clapped upon landing, however. We rented a Mitsubishi Montero, a 7 passenger 4x4 (mandatory insurance increases the quoted rate by 50%) and found that we still had to put some bags on the roof. Fortunately I had packed a couple of ratcheting tie-down straps for that very purpose.

We stayed the first night in San Jose.   Chelsea took us to a restaurant that had been recommended by several people, and it ended up being on the other side of the city, so we got an unplanned nighttime tour of the city. We also did some shopping -- Josh had purchased a couple of unlocked quad-band phones, so we bought SIM cards with 200 minutes each (a minute costs about 7 cents when you do it that way, as opposed to $2.49 roaming with Verizon). We found that Walmart has conquered San Jose, so we stocked up on junk food for the car.

The next day, we got rolling at about 9:30 am.  Our goal was to go to La Fortuna and get to our next place of lodging by dark, stopping at whatever caught our eye along the way.   I read that driving in Costa Rica is kind of like sailing -- plan a destination, shoot to be there before the sun sets, and enjoy the journey.  The road from San Jose to La Fortuna is a winding two lane road with steep inclines, unexpected obstacles such as pot holes, people or large animals on the road, oncoming trucks or buses that play chicken (they speed up and act as if you should pull over when they approach), and are punctuated by one lane bridges.  The GPS would beep so frequently with an alert, "dangerous bridge ahead", that it became our running joke.  As we climbed out of San Ramos, we ran into thick fog with visibility of less than 50 meters.  We just followed the tail lights of the car ahead of us.  Here is a picture of the landscape once we broke out of the fog:

We planned to stop at a butterfly preserve, but the woman at the entrance told us to save out money because we wouldn't see many butterflies.

We kept on pushing until we reached the La Fortuna waterfall -- a spectacular torrent that comes shooting out of a hole in the jungle and plunges about 50 meters into a small pool.  Adjacent to it is a smaller bridal veil waterfall.  Here's a picture of Jennifer and me near the base:

The steps down to the pool are definitely not OSHA compliant -- about 500 steps of irregular height and width, ranging from 2 to 14 inches, and an occasional chain for a handhold.  My old knees protested as I slowly made my way down, but it was worth the trip.  At the bottom of the steps was a small pool of less than 10 meters across, which was the starting point for a river. Of course, Spencer, Kirsten and Garrett inched out on a log to a rock in the middle of the torrent, disregarding their mother's waving and hollering.  When Spencer slipped and nearly fell in, they finally got some sense and decided to inch their way back.  The hike back up was a workout. It was raining and I was sweating and by the time I got back it looked like I had been swimming.

We made our way into La Fortuna, where we scheduled a rafting trip for the next day on the Rio Balsa with Desafio Adventures.  We then bumped our way up a 9 km rutted road to Leaves and Lizards, a cabin reteat that had arranged our lodging at a local Tico farm.  Jennifer and I prefer staying at off-the-beaten-path places when we travel, so we were looking at a place like treehouses or the like. L&L was booked up, but the owner suggested that we stay at a local farm where the owners had just built a 4 bedroom guest house this summer.  They named it "Finca Tuete" and they could accommodate our clan. We met the owners at L&L, and followed them to their farm.  He was in his late 30s, she was in her early 30s, and they had two daughters, ages 11 and 6. They had about 75 milk cows, a bunch of beef cattle, and various other farm animals. They produce virtually all of their food on site.  We took a tour of their farm, the kids bottle fed some calves:

We made cheese with the warm milk straight from the cow, then ate it for dinner.  We spent Christmas Eve dinner with them, and gave the family some presents that we brought from the States. It has been a lot of fun, and better than almost any other place we could have stayed.  Here is a view from our guest house of he farm:

Yesterday, we all went rafting on the Rio Balsa. The kids all went in one raft, and Jennifer and I went with two other couples in another raft.  We were up front, and drank every rapid.  Although it was only a class 2-3, on the first rapid two people in our raft fell in.  I pulled in one, but the other had to be rescued by another raft.  Pura vida!  We had a lot of fun.

Today we had breakfast with the Tico family, then have spent the rest of the day at Tabacon.  The resort is beautifully landscaped with many pools of hot water, ranging from about 106 degrees down to the mid 90s. Our Christmas gift to the kids was massages at the spa, and they oozed out with silly grins on their faces.  We also had the lunch and dinner buffet, and we've stuffed ourselves like good Americans. Here's a couple of pictures of us in the warm waters, ranging from 95-105 degrees: