Trip to Costa Rica part I

Thursday April 26
Our first stop was to the Mount Arenal volcano. It was really rainy and cloudy and you couldn't see anything. It's the start of the rainy season in 4 days so we prayed for sun.
Friday April 27th
The rain stopped and we rode horses up to a waterfall. Dad hated the trotting and the whole horse thing. i loved galloping in the jungle. Dad's horse was named whisky, because it would have been much better if he were drunk to endure the pain of trotting. The waterfall was amazing. You leave your horse tied up and hike down a canyon for about 30 minutes and at the bottom is a 200 foot waterfall. We hiked up to the Arenal Volcano and watched the semi-cooled lava boulders crashing down the mountain. Then we went to the Tabacon hot Springs and soaked in the lava heated waters until dark, then our guide took us back to the volcano to see the lava boulders at night.


Saturday the 28th we rode a boat across a lake and the boat docked in the mud! When we were packing I said "Costa Rica is kind of a wild place, I think we should backpack" He said, Oh no, I don't want to carry my backpack through all those airports, I want my wheelie suitcase" It was a long ways walk to the vans. The people who had wheelie suitcases had a hard time. Then we drove to Monteverde on really, really bad dirt roads up steep jungle mountains and ate the most amazing meal at the tree house restaurant. It had chicken, shrimp, homemade mayonnaise and curry pineapple and raisins. That night we did a "night walk" in the cloud forest (fancy name for rain forest) which is another name for scare the heck out of you by showing you all the critters that could be landing on you from the trees or crawling up your legs from the ground below. Here are some pictures of what we saw. The guide tore the legs off a cricket and we watched this tarantula gobble it down. The worst were the leafcutter ants. Their guards had giant pincers and I was listening to the guide talk and didn't realize I was standing on their 10 foot tall mound.