Costa Rica June 1-8, 2007

Well we finally made it back from Liberia, Costa Rica. We went there from June 1 through June 8, 2007. We flew Delta of course to Liberia. Upon arrival we had to go through their customs and head to the place where we stayed. We stayed at Condovac La Costa, which was part of our time share. It was nice, but Costa Rica is definitely still a third world country. We had a nice place, but there was only air conditioning in the sleeping area that we stayed in and there was no air conditioning in the living area and kitchen area. We actually ended up getting use to it toward the end of our stay.

Saturday, we decided to scope out the place. We went to a local town called Tamarino. That place is nice, very touristy and there is a Best Western there. There are a lot of surf shops and local shops to shop in. We heard later that it was the place to go to purchase wooden goods. We ended up getting a fishing boat from that area for Monday.

Sunday, we went to another local town nearby and tried to find a volcano called Rincon. We drove down about 20 KM of a dirt, bumpy road and through a gate to find the place. We hiked in about 15 minutes to see a waterfall with very cold water. We hope we got some pretty pictures. We ended up driving around to return home and we ran across an animal rescue center where we saw local animals that are being re-habilitated to go back into the wild. They are building a monkey cage so that way the monkey’s that were burned by electricity could tell the other monkeys to stay off the electrical wires. That is the leading cause of monkey death! Did you know that? I sure didn’t. We saw toucans and local birds as well as a raccoon and something that looked like an aardvark, but forget the name. They had a butterfly garden area and learned that once you touch a butterfly, you have pretty much killed it as they have certain things on their wings that do not work well with human touch.

Monday, we went out on the ocean to try to catch a blue or black marlin. The only thing we caught was a 4lb dolphin and drank lots of beer. We saw a lot of the flipper dolphins in which Keith got mad at me for pointing those out to Katelyn because they are bad luck for fishing. Needless to say Keith was real disappointed in the fishing boat that we rented for the day. We did see plenty of the flipper dolphins which was real neat. We also saw a turtle floating in the ocean and a pelican was sitting on his back. We knew it was going to be a bad fishing trip right from the beginning because I even spotted a school of fish in the ocean and the captain and mate did not see them. If that is telling you anything about the fishing excursion. (I don’t see those things).

Tuesday, we went to the beach in the morning just down the hill from our resort and then we played the rest of the afternoon in the pool at the resort. Katelyn loved swimming and she even learned to swim to the edge of the pool by herself. She surprised us all!

Wednesday, we went to the Lake Arenal area and saw the larger more touristy of the volcanoes. It was about 3 hours from our resort. It ended up taking 1 hour just to get around the lake because they don’t have a bridge that crosses the lake. Lake Arenal area is very nice. We ended up eating at a German Restaurant that was very good and all of us had the Wiener schnitzel which was Devine. Later we ended up trying to find Tabacon. We thought it was a national park, but it was actually a five star hotel with a hot springs area. The hot springs were great, but because we were sunburned a little, it stung a little. Everything was very nice and we wish we had allocated more time for Tabacon. It costs $55 just to enter the area and they have a nice rainforest and several different pools at different temperatures to swim in. Katelyn was not fond of the hot springs because she thought they were too hot. She loved the slide into the large pool though. She went down it with her daddy! You can see more about Tabacon at tabacon.com.

Thursday, it was cloudy in the morning, so we headed out for the Canopy Tour to swing through the trees. Katelyn started out going on the canopy tour, but then she chickened out at the last minute and didn’t go. I had a couple of really great guys go with me through the trees and they allowed me swing like Spiderman as well as upside down and of course normal since I wasn’t afraid of heights. All things that I know Keith wouldn’t do. After that we went back to the resort and went swimming and packed our clothes up to head home. We swam for the rest of the day in between the thunderstorms.

Friday, we left to return back home. We ate our breakfast one last time at the resort and then headed to the airport to pay a $26 per person departure tax to head home through customs which took almost 2 hours. Katelyn and I had to get up early the next day because we were going to Melbourne to drop her off. We ended up missing three flights to MLB/Orlando area because it was so full as Friday had a blackout with the FAA system. I returned on Sunday to head to Jury Duty on Monday.

Henry County really needs to work on their Jury Duty process because we arrived at 8AM to be stuck in the room until about 11AM and then dismissed to lunch until about 1:15 pm to be asked a bunch of questions like what TV shows we watched to be dismissed from the Jury. Who knew that CSI and Boston Legal may dismiss me from a case for armed robbery. Funny though, all questions they asked us in person could have been easily answered with a simple questionnaire that we could have sent in.

Tuesday, it was back to work like normal.

Overall we had a great time. It went by fast, but just right. I still think Costa Rica is a third world country and they really need to work on their road structures and naming the roads. There are no signs on the roads so a map is virtually worthless and if you plan on going there, definitely rent a 4X4 for those bumpy unpaved roads. Hope everyone is doing well and we would love to hear from you too!

Pictures are online. If you need the username and password, let me know.