Just a quick visual overview of my recent trip through Costa Rica. More blog posts, destination guides, and lots of photos yet to come…
Since apparently, it’s going to take me just a tad longer to sort through photos and publish comprehensive photo blog posts (for this website) and write full articles about specific places and experiences in Costa Rica (for Happier Place), for now I’d like to just share with you a blog post, I originally published on Patreon about 3 weeks ago. Here it goes…
Scott and I went to Costa Rica for my 50th birthday (Earth Day) and spent a week road-tripping from San Jose to the Pacific Coast into the rain forest to the beach on the Nicoya Peninsula (also on the Pacific) and then up into the cloud forest back down into the central valley and back up in to the rain forest… and we saw so many incredible vistas, plants, birds, monkeys, sloths and all kinds of other critters, including a surprise tarantula in-between us on the hiking trail deep in the Santa Elena Cloud Forest Reserve.
After spending our first night in the city of San Jose, on our first full day in Costa Rica we drove down to the Pacific Coast, over Crocodile Bridge and to Carara National Park.
With tired bodies from all the hiking, we took the opportunity to rest our legs while driving to Nosara on the Nicoya Peninsula to visit our friends Lisa and Squally. The road ended up being so bumpy that Waze gave us the heads-up that the last 14 miles would take 50 minutes – as we had to slowly maneuver around the pot–, no SINKholes. But the journey was SO worth the result of being with friends and seeing Nosara!
The next day, we got back in the car and drove another 4 hours back onto the mainland and from sea level all the way up into the clouds around Monte Verde and Santa Elena.
Once we arrived in the clouds and it got dark, we went on a night hike. Photo to come…
Our longest hiking day had us cover 18 km of cloud forest trails and 2 opportunities to watch and photograph the resplendent quetzal – both the male and the female who we patiently awaited at their nest in the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve.
On our last full day in Costa Rica, we went to see the La Paz waterfalls and the 4th kind of Costa Rican monkey and that beautiful, iconic, blue mono butterfly. Photos to come…
Our longest drive was 4 1/4 hours – and started at the Pacific Coast and ended up after some very bumpy, skinny, winding, mountain roads in the clouds at a charming hotel in the woods that came with its own hummingbird and other cool birds.
I couldn’t have spent my birthday in a better way. And I’m really grateful Scott and I could make this happen. Looking forward to all that comes from this journey.