After the "Romance and the Stone" bus ride our flights
home for Christmas were (thanks goodness) uneventful.
It was great to be home with family for the Holidays!
We arrived home on December 22nd and spent a couple
frantic days finishing up our Christmas
shopping....boy oh boy how quickly we had forgotten
how crazy it is Christmas shopping in the Bay Area.
We were very, very glad we had done a bunch of our
shopping in Mexico and Costa Rica.
Vaughn's sister Joy and her husband Ken came out to California from Mississippi to join us for Christmas. We had a lovely Christmas Eve celebration at Vaughn's Dad's house with all of Vaughn's family. Then Christmas Day it was off to Sharon's Mom's house to celebrate Christmas with Sharon's family. We had a great time. It was truly wonderful to be home with our families. Traveling is great but we really miss our family and friends.
The week between Christmas and New Years was spent preparing for the big New Years Eve 2000 Extravaganzas! Sharon spent every waking moment helping her family transform a warehouse into an elegant festive place for the event. We blew up over 4000 balloons and had them in big nets hanging from the ceiling. We painted the walls and floors with gold and silver stars. We hung up thousand of twinkle lights. Prepared all the food and stocked the Tiki Hut Bar...the list goes on and on. Mission accomplished by the night of the big event the place looked great.
We had 200 friends join us for the big New Years 2000 celebration. The party turned out absolutely wonderful. Everybody had an excellent time. When the clock struck midnight we let the balloons go and everybody was covered knee deep in balloons...lots of hugging, screaming and balloon popping. It was a great way to usher in the new millennium. We danced until 4:00 in the morning. Sharon (not being use to high heels anymore) danced until her feet couldn't take it any more. Happy Year 2000 to all!!!
Our time home as always went way to fast. We headed back to Costa Rica on January 7th. Sharon's brother Olin and his friend Anne came back to Costa Rica with us to enjoy a three-week vacation. We did all the touristy things we could fit into 3 weeks. We saw a lot of Costa Rica! It was a lot of fun.
We arrived back to "Reality" at the Flamingo Marina after another long bus ride. We spent a day enjoying the beaches in the Flamingo area. Then took a tour up to the Ricon Volcano. The tour was to include a Tree Top Canopy Ride, Horseback riding and mud baths. We were glad we had decided to take a tour instead of driving to the volcano ourselves because the road was terrible. It had potholes big enough to get lost in. We got all the way up to the top of the volcano only to be greeted by 75+ MPH winds! We practically got blown off the top just trying to stand. All the activities were of course canceled the thought of even trying to get up on a horse in that much wind was frightening, that alone trying to swing through the treetops. The scenery was beautiful so we enjoyed the ride back down the Volcano. The guide then took us to another Canopy Tour. We had a ball on this Canopy Tour. It's like a Disneyland ride. You put on a harness and then clamp onto a cable that is way the heck up in the tree tops, you slide down the cable hanging in the air from tree to tree. Now we know what it's like to be Tarzan! While sliding along the treetops we saw a whole family of Howler Monkeys.
The follow day we went to Parque Nacional Barra Honda to go cave exploring. Vaughn wasn't crazy about the idea of going underground so he chose to stay and watch the boat. Sharon, Olin and Anne went with another couple to the caves. We hiked an hour to get to cave then dropped vertically straight down 90 feet on a tiny cable ladder. Very exciting! There is no way you would even be allowed to consider doing this kind of thing in U.S.A. The lawyers would have a field day with the liability possibilities. It's refreshing to see in Costa Rica (and most the rest of the world) people are still accountable for their OWN actions. The cave had three huge rooms. The rock formations were beautiful. All kinds of stalactites and stalagmites, waterfall like formations, and columns. It was beautiful.
We then provisioned up and set sail. We started off with a bunch of wind 25 knots right on the nose making it a rough ride. It took Anne and Olin a day to get their sea legs, once they did they did great on the boat. We went to Bahia Huevos and did a little snorkeling. Then did an over night sail to Bahia Carrillo, the winds were behinds us but still blowing a good 25+ knots, and it was a fast wet sail. Carrillo was a beautiful bay. We went for a walk up the hills over looking the bay and had dinner at a nice hotel. We met up with a sport fisherman we had met in Flamingo and got the run down on fishing. We planned to go give Sail and Marlin fishing a try the next day. But as we were walking in the surf pushing the dinghy out to head back to Reality, Sharon stepped on a Stingray and got badly stung. We asked the local fisherman what was the best thing to do, cause it hurt like hell. They told us to put it in really, really hot vinegar water for an hour and said that it was highly unlikely she would want to go fishing the next day. So, we canceled the sportfishing plans and agreed to try fishing in a couple weeks in Quepos. After a couple margaritas and an hour of soaking her foot Sharon was feeling pretty good again. So we set sail and heading south again the following morning.
We sailed to Bahia Ballena. Sailing along we hooked up several large fish. Olin got to fight several of them for a while, a couple of them broke our 30lbs test lines and a couple of them spit out the hooks. It was quite exciting. Vaughn was successful in landing a beautiful 25lb Ahi Tuna....we would all eat well tonight! The Ballena bay was a large pretty bay, with a very comfortable feel. We spent a couple days there exploring. On Friday we watched a local band, the music and the people were a throw back to the 60's it was kind of fun...just like we stepped back in time.
We sailed onto Cedros Island for the night, then onto Bahia Luminosa. We left the boat in Bahia Luminosa with some friend watching over it and started off to do some land exploring.
We rented a car in Punteranas and started off on a 4 day adventure. We drove to Sachi a beautiful artist community that is famous for making hand painted Oxen Carts. I know you are thinking what the heck do you do with a hand painted Oxen Cart. Well in Costa Rica the local farming community still use Oxen to do all the work on their farms. Their intricate detail paintings became so well known it became a tourist attraction....so the enterprising locals became to make small replica Oxen Cart into little "Mini Bars" complete with glasses and places to store half a dozen bottles of your favorite booze. They sell a bunch of them!!! There were also all kinds of beautiful exotic rain forest wooden crafts; cutting boards, jewelry boxes, trays and carvings. Olin and Anne stocked up on some birthday present shopping.
We continued driving up into the mountains past mile after mile of coffee bean plantations. The drive was beautiful, the road followed knife-edge ridges as it wound up the mountainside. The views all directions were spectacular. We briefly stopped in a little town of Zarcero near the top of the mountain that had a wonderful church and public garden. The gardener had spent years trimming huge juniper type plants in to all kind of creatures and creations. He had carved a chicken, an elephant, a snake, a pig, a bullfighter and bull, all kinds of stuff. The path leading up to the church was lined with huge bushes trimmed into double arches. It was fun to see.
We arrived at the Arenal Volcano just around sunset. The Volcano is still very active; lava explodes from the top of the volcano daily. They say it is best to view the volcano at night when the erupting lava puts on quite a light show. So we checked into a lovely little Eco-Lodge run by a group of Quaker families in the town of La Fortuna. They had organic gardens, butterfly farms and all kinds of ecology minded programs and activities. We had dinner in town and had hoped to drive up to the volcano observation site to enjoy the volcano....only the weather did not cooperate. The clouds were so thick we could not see a thing!
We drove on the next morning. Our first stop was at the Tabacon Hot Springs. The hot springs are created by the volcano and are literally a river of "hot tub" steamy hot water. The river tumbles through beautiful dense jungle cascading into pools perfect for soaking the days away. We walked through a beautiful resort that had been built around the river. The resort had gorgeous flowering gardens, waterfalls and cascades with perfect pools to steam in the hot water. On a clear day the volcano is suppose to make a spectacular back drop. There are several bars along the river of course, so you could enjoy our favorite cocktail as you soaked ...quite decadent!
We drove around Lake Arenal a huge beautiful lake. The terrain was now very dense jungle. The scenery was beautiful, huge trees and ferns with vines growing on everything. The road on the other had was terrible, all dirt and mud with huge potholes. It's a good thing we were enjoying the scenery because you could only travel at a snails pace. Vaughn was did all the driving, he did a great job, and we never got stuck even once! We left the lake and headed back up into the mountains through miles and miles of steep grassy hills, cattle country. The scenery looked a lot like the cattle country in the Californian foothills or Coastal Mountains. It was very pretty, but a shame, because it use to be dense rain forest that was clear-cut years ago for cattle grazing by the ranchers. We wound our way up the mountain dirt roads to the Monteverde Cloud Forest Park.
We arrived at the Monteverde Cloud Forest and were told if we wanted to backpack in for the night, which was our plan, we would need to get started immediately for it was a 5 mile walk and we would be pushing it to get in by dark. We quickly organized our backpacks and headed out on the 5 mile walk to a little rustic backpackers cabin. The hike was amazing. The rain forest jungle was dense with all different kinds of plants. We hiked up over a mountain ridge. It was a clear sun day and the views from the ridge top were spectacular. The terrain was very steep, the jagged mountains cut deeply to river valleys far, far below. The backpackers cabin was on the rivers so we started a long, long descent traversing down the mountain ridge to the river valley below. It felt like the "Journey to the Center of the Earth". The deeper we went the denser the jungle became and the larger the plants got. Some of the plants had leaves so huge; a single leave could be used as an umbrella. It was definitely a completely different world, beautiful.
We reached the cabin just as the sun was setting. The cabin was very primitive. It had 10 bunk beds and a small cooking area but it did provide you with a roof to stay dry in the rain. There were a couple ladies from Seattle, Washington and a young man from Spain already at the cabin. With the last light from the sun we enjoyed the beauty of the river and the thick jungle around us. We cooked up our dinner and shared stories with the Martha, Rill and Juan. Juan was a white water rafter; he had traveled a lot of the world on a shoestring. Martha had travel in Africa and Rill had traveled throughout Peru and South America. They were all very interesting, fun people.
We woke the next morning to rain no real surprise in a rain forest! We enjoyed wandering around the cabin in the morning. We saw lots of different kinds of birds and saw white-faced monkeys for the first time. At noon we started hiking back up, up, up out of the valley. The hike in the rain was wonderful, although it was the same trail we had taken down the previous day; it had a very different feel in the pouring rain. The jungle took on a mystical enchanted look. Everything was soft and blurry, with a magical quality. We had a great time hiking along in bathing suits in the misty rain.
The next day we drove down the mountains, turned in the rental car and took a ferry back across the bay, back to "Reality". We set sail bright and early the next morning heading out on a two day sail to Quepos to try our luck at sport fishing. We had a nice gentle sail to Bahai Herradura. The bay was supposed to have excellent snorkeling, so as soon as we got there we went to check it out. The visibility was really poor but we enjoyed checking out all the different reef fish. Olin and Anne got to see a bunch of fish they had never seen before. The follow day we had another lovely gentle sail arriving in Quepos.
The big Sail Fish Fly Fishing Tournament in Quepos was just finishing up, there were over 50 sport fishing boats in the bay. We checked in with our sportfisherman buddy only to find that the fishing the last couple of days had been terrible. A week ago he said they were nailing them by the dozens. Fishing is that way; it can be hot one day and nothing the next. He recommended we save our money and not try fishing for a couple days. We thought we had a reservation to go fishing the following day, so even with this warning, Olin was eager to try his luck so we agreed to join him. The next morning we got all prepared to go fishing only to have the boat we thought we had reserved tell us since he hadn't heard from us he had booked another charter...we were SOL. Oh well it wasn't suppose to be good fishing anyway...so we headed out instead to see Manuel Antonio Park.
Manuel Antonio Park was beautiful. It was kind of the Yosemite of Costa Rica....in that it was gorgeous, a definite must to see....but with the beautiful also came quite a crowd! Up to this point we had been very spoiled by Costa Rica, most places we had gone we were all by ourselves, absolutely no crowd. The beaches at Manuel Antonio were beautiful. We hiked through the park and came face to face with White Faced Monkeys. They have learned tourist have food. They will come down to the beach and steal food out of peoples picnic baskets...must have taken lessons from "Yogi Bear"! We also saw Squirrel Monkeys; they weren't near as bold. We enjoyed swimming in the ocean and playing Frisbee on the beach.
We spent the next four days in Quepos enjoying the town and local area. Olin was never able to set up a Sail Fishing trip. The boats were all booked. It's amazing with all the sportfishing boats; they were all completely booked up....I guess in prime season you need to reserve way in advance. Olin and Anne's vacation winding down they jumped on a bus and then flew back to the States. It was great to have them visit. I think they enjoyed Costa Rica....I know we do!