Garra -rufa ish are kind of fish used in fish spas. They eat your skin… only fish that have no teeth… cool!cost 10,000 colones or $22CAD for 15 minutes.

A funny thing I saw in a shop in Coco. I had found a dress I wanted to try on but there were no clerks visible so I went looking for one. What do I find at the first open door but two young people laying on the cement floor with wet cloths on their foreheads…. on their devices. They barely moved as they told me that the change room was the next door. Obviously I was not the only one having trouble with the heat.

On Sunday the 17th we left our extremely spacious well appointed 3 bedroom condo (60 stairs up and 60 steps down. The grounds of the complex were manicured to the nth degree and every time you drove in, your pass was scanned).

The drive back to San Jose was uneventful but over 4 hours long….. not just down the road! The unfortunate part of returning the car on a Sunday (it was the same when picking it up) is that the main street that the car rental was on (Paseo Colon) was closed for the day …. for 2 months each year so that the kids would have playground. There were trampolines, zip-lines and sack races. Fun for them. Most of the streets in the area are one-ways. We (even the cabbie from the week before) could not find our way back to the rental place. I eventually got out and walked to it and asked them to help us….. just in time. The same fellow that rescued us (he couldn’t speak English but we got it figured out) end up putting our luggage back in the car and driving us to our new home away from home for the next 2 days. Not quite the same level of quality but still very nice…. and it had a pool!

Monday the 18th we walked into the centre of town (past the car rental place) to the Centro Mercado.

Not too exciting! While down there we went into a cathedral. Not spectacular…. and cabbed it “home”

Roots of the old trees along Paseo Colon… amazing!

One of the many pink buses (along with a whole lot of brilliantly coloured buses…. in front of the cathedral in San Jose

Produce cartage… San Jose

Inside the cathedral

More cathedral

Someone with the handle of “dancers64” seems to like my blog but I am really curious who you might be. Please send me private message and satisfy my curiosity.

Friends from home Roy and Debra, showed us a very, very hard-to-find waterfall …..Catarata Llanos Del Cortez. The turn off was off the highway south of Liberia where there was a cell tower and the “3rd” pedestrian overpass with a ……lol! It was a beautiful refreshing spot. So we all went for a swim/dip. Awesome! While in there we had the little fishes (3 inches?) “biting” our legs……much like the fish spa from the day before only more so. Deb, Roy and I climbed up to the top of the waterfall….. a totally different perspective. On the way, there was a cenote that Roy did a Tarzan dive into….”John Wisemueller eat your heart out”. We saw face-faced capuchins and howler monkeys. One howler had a baby on its back. They are so cool! I just love the howling they do…think it would be neat to have that as my ringtone on my phone. Sorry about the quality of pictures but I only had my phone.

Instead of just hanging out at the pool we decided to go searching for something interesting to do. We were all wanting to go snorkelling. The second place we checked, the gal that ran the “tourist information” was…..you guessed it…. a gal from southern Ontario. Nice! Just about everyone we meet are from Canada. I wonder why??? Escaping winter maybe? Anyway we booked a catamaran cruise that included snorkelling, open bar, a great dinner and seeing the sun drop into the sea…..on Valentine’s Day. For many it was a romantic cruise. For us…..it was fun.

Monkey Face rock

Before we booked the cruise, we were crossing an “island” in the road when a very large iguana….believe it or not, fell out of the banyan tree…..almost right at our feet. Scared the crap out of us!

While we were trying to kill some time before we were to go out on the boat, we found a “fish spa” and decided to give it a try. It was a weird feeling having those toothless fish (Garra -rufa ish) sucking all the dead skin off your feel and legs….kind of like little electric charges. Fun!

Yellow nape parrot at first stop. Can live to 100 yrs. …mate for life … considering humans their mate. Because humans don’t live as long as parrots, when the owner dies the parrot is lost and lonely.

We are travelling to Arenal volcano (by bus) 2nd most active in world, and to La Fortuna across a lake… on boat then a bus.

Because of damage caused by the exploding volcano, the government moved the 2 destroyed villages. In doing so were able to make a huge damn for electricity …which began 1970. It created Arenal Lake.. biggest lake in Central America. The country’s goal is to be carbon neutral by 2020 (I’m impressed) by the use of hydro dams, windmills.. (wind farms) and water heating by solar….. in hotels

Imported vehicles are taxed but electric cars are tax free.

Another innovative thing they have done, is drill a tunnel through mountains transporting water from the lake (on the Caribbean side of the continental devide) which is very wet… through to the dry side in Guanacaste province, hence making it arable farming.

We saw a herd of white nosed coatis….. all of which are female. Never are there males in the group unless they are mating. The more scars on their noses from fighting, the older they are …… They are very aggressive animals… don’t mess with them.

We three left the GAdventures group of 16 plus our guide Daniel…. yesterday. It was wonderful meeting this group touring most of Costa Rica for the last 16 days. Now we are on our own for the next week plus. We had rented a car in San Jose, planning to drive to Playa del Coco to our new home away from home at Pacifico. The signage on the roads is less than ideal….. of course if we understood Spanish it would help… lol! Consequently we had turn around a couple of times and retrace our steps….. arriving here closer to 4.5 hours instead of 3.5. We were to meet our “concierge” before 3pm but when we arrived at his office, he was not there. As we were wondering how we were going to reach him….. with no wifi to call with, he arrived…phew! All was well. Beautiful huge 3 bedroom condo….. with a washer/dryer…. yes! Guess what we did after living out of a suitcase and kind of roughing it for the better part of 2 weeks? Yup…. laundry!

Finally we have good wifi so of course I have posted a whole lot of pictures etc. Maybe now I have caught up!!!

Lichen hanging in the trees

Hibiscus

Elephant Ears Philodendron

Bird of paradise

Bromeliad hiding place for vipers… searching food of frogs and hummingbirds

Sapphora… most wonderful fruit

Agouti…largest rodent

Coati….so hard to capture… move too fast. Almost blind but smell and sense vibrations for food. Biggest Coati in world.

Blue crown muttmutt

2 toed sloth…live for 20 yrs… only one (of the two types) that can survive at these altitudes and lower temperatures as opposed to 3 toed sloth which needs higher temperatures. Predators are puma, Jaguars & ocelots. They poop like cats … dig hole then cover up so the big cats don’t know they are in the trees above.

Ficus tree … biggest parasite tree in the country….takes 40-50 years to kill host. Can reach 500 years old.

53 types of hummingbirds in country. Males makes the nest. Vipers are their predator.

Can’t seem to find if I posted this before. Forgive me if I have.

Feb 1…Kayaking with Jeanette and guide Gustavo. The other kayakers were Barbara from Ottawa, Suzanna from Sudbury via Hungary, Diane from England and Anne from upstate NY. All are with Toucan tours and J and I with GADVENTURES

It was a good work-out of my core muscles just trying to get across the open windy waters of Arenal Lake….. a first time in a kayak for me. I paddle outrigger at home but this is different. Once across, the waters were peaceful and calm checking out the shore for the many egrets, osprey and a wild pig….which I missed because it moved so quickly.

The views of Arenal Volcano were spectacular….the sky clear so we could see the little puffs of steam coming out.. usually it is “shy”. Apparently it could be weeks when it is impossible to see the volcano.

Later in the evening we three went to “EcoTermales” mineral springs….a natural hot spring. The water is heated by the volcano. Oh my was that wonderful! Hot water pools, cool water pools and waterfalls pounding on sore muscles.. pure heaven.

Next day the 2nd, a bunch of us went white-water rafting down the Balsa River. This is the dry season but there is a hydro electric dam on the river but a certain times of the day, they open the floodgates…good for us. So…..it was so much fun! There were probably 8 rafts with 6 in each but…..no one went for an unscheduled dump. I’ve done it a few times before but this was the best even if it was rated only a three.

Later we went to another hot springs Los Lagos, which was more commercial type operation..with hotel . We three preferred the first. The others on the tour, did not go to the first so how could they compare

The roads seem to be in really pretty good shape although they are only one lane in either direction…. too small for the amount of traffic. This area around Limon is particularly heavy with semis and huge and medium sized buses. Limon is a major shipping port.

I would say a lot of the bridges are one lane with one direction having the right of way…. always ( according to the sign). Well ….at one such bridge, our bus had the right of way (I’m guessing) but a small car coming the other way thought he would go first (& the one behind)but at the mid pint when the bus did not stop for him, he threw up his hands then put his car in reverse as did the car behind and backed up. Our bus driver never skipped a beat in his conversation.

On the outskirts of Limon we had a flat tire. So …. off on the side of the road in the searing heat, our driver had to change the very flat tire. Poor guy! No roadside assistance here…. lol!

This smallish town of Puerto Viejo reminds me of an old hippie town with the scent of “weed” wafting in the air and the odd old codger looking pretty “wasted”. As we were walking along the beach we were asked if we wanted to buy some….. not! Apparently this town has been developing recently, a bad reputation for holdups and robberies. Not good because to me it would be a lovely place to go at another time.

Everywhere you see people riding bicycles (with no handbrakes) in the most beautiful colours (look for pictures). A good portion of our group went riding but Linda, Jeanette and I just walked around looking in the stores, stopping at an ATM, then stopping to take a dip in the Caribbean. We all brought along our own snorkel masks because snorkelling was on the optional activities list but…. ‘twas not to be. The sea is too rough….. much better for surfing!

Our hotel “Escape Caribeno” was really quite lovely with beautiful manicured gardens.

Tempurature 29C at 1:30. Very hot and HUMID!

The last leg in our return into San Jose is up in through the Braulio Carrillio Natl Park which includes the volcanic mountains of the continental divide. The rivers that come off the mountains from rain runoff become the water supply for the city of San Jose. The forests of this park help clean the pollution created by the 400,000 cars per day that come in & out of San Jose. Sucio River that brings the deposits from the volcano is orange…. like rust. Quite disgusting looking.